Analyzing the Collaboration Network of Global Scientific Outputs in the Field of Bibliotherapy in the Web of Science Database

Bibliotherapy is a useful treatment for the prevention and treatment of mental disorders and has led to the formation of many scientific publications in this field. The purpose of this study was to investigate the publication trends in the field of bibliotherapy and visualize the structure of its scientific collaborations based on the Web of Science database during the period 1975 to 2020.

The present scientometric study was conducted by citation analysis and social network analysis. The statistical population includes 1032 documents published. HistCite, VOSveiwer, Pajek and UciNet software were used to analyze the data. The co-authorship networks were analyzed and drawn by the VOSviewer software.

U.S., UK, and Australia were ranked first to third with 369, 148, and 91 documents respectively. The documents published by researchers from these three countries have received 10547, 3459, and 3041 citations, respectively. The Universities of Alabama, Nevada, and the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published the most in this field, with 29, 26, and 21 documents. Scogin F, Cuijpers P, and Rohde P were the most prolific authors with 29, 21, and 17 documents, respectively. Miller WR, Cuijpers P, and Andersson G received the most citations with 2441, 2298, and 1750, citations respectively. UK with 63 degree centrality, U.S. the most influential country with a betweenness centrality of 191.450 and the closeness centrality of the 80 were the most influential countries, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with a betweenness centrality of 1416.755 and a closeness centrality of 658 and the Karolinska Institute with a degree centrality of 43 was the most influential organizations. Rohde P with 39-degree centrality and Cuijpers P with 314.500 betweenness centrality and 821 closeness centrality were the most active author in the co-authorship networks in bibliotherapy. Journal of Clinical Counseling and Psychology was the most cited and the Journal of Poetry Therapy published the most documents.

Paying more attention than before to the cooperation of countries, universities and active authors in the field of bibliotherapy can lead to more knowledge and experience exchange in developed and developing countries.